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Went downstairs to get some breakfast today – not the usual Saturday morning bacon & eggs though – inspired by Clipper Cafe’s (Glebe Point Road) amazing (and not to mention uber healthy) avocado spread, I went and got myself some avocado and ham; avoiding all fatty products altogether.

I went down to the last aisle of the minimart and saw an elderly lady about 5 feet tall staring at the cold storage section. The section where they sell butter, milk and bacon. She had a basket in her hands and she was wearing an old lady’s cardigan with a longish straight skirt. She had socks on complete with black shoes for walking. She could hobble but mobility, I could tell, was not her forte.

I turned right after I saw her and picked up a fresh avocado. Wanted to pick up some cold ham so I stood next to her looking for stuff. She must have felt uncomfortable cause she moved a little when I approached. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to say hello but only managed a smile. And its one of those indirect smiles too. Hmmm… I should’ve said hello but what would I have said?

Arggh… Old people are my weakness I tell you. If you put an old person in front of me and asked me to donate a million thousand dollars, I would probably do it. Its an automatic thing I guess, they seem so helpless. I think I’ve mentioned it in this blog before but that’s the fact and frailty of human life isn’t it? You have your strongest years in your youth and slowly deteriorate into being a weak, slow and helpless human.

In a western country like Australia, you often see old people being neglected and left to fend themselves. It’s a very saddening fact and often I think of ways to combat this on a bigger level. Not sure what kinda support I would get but it is a fact that even if a ministry or organization is set up for our senior citizens, it wouldn’t be a business of high return. And then of course there would be surmounting medical bills etc but old people do not want to be sick! Who does right???

Aging. Getting old.

It’s a natural thing. Terrible, debilitating and sometimes even humiliating. But again everyone goes through it.

I guess that’s my only comfort. That everyone will get old. Everyone will experience forgetting stuff as memories slip away. Every single human will try their very best to get the perfect hair dye to hide the greys. That you and I will need crutches one day; will need people to help us on and off buses and help us learn to use this thing called the Internet. And how to use ATMs…

And people will forget what you and I used to do. Forget that we used to drive manual cars. Forget how the Japs invaded Malaya. Forget that we used petrol for fuel. Forget that Richard Nixon was president. Forget that we saw the first African American become president. Forget when bicycles were used instead of cars. Forget that we were there when 9/11 happened. Forget that to get clothes; it had to be tailored. Forget that we were there when Sadam Hussein was executed.

That’s the only comfort I have. That my turn will come. So I don’t have to feel that bad for senior citizens I guess.

Ah… So sad. I nearly burst into tears thinking of the old lady and what potentially could be her day-to-day life at the minimart today. Thank God she didn’t select only the Home Brand products. This old lady had class and obviously wasn’t on a mere below the poverty line government pension. That’s my other comfort today – even though she was alone, found it hard to walk and does her shopping on a Saturday morning; she was trudging along just fine. Despite her soft voice and her trembling hands; she was fine.

She even had time to dye her hair brown – greys hairs absorb the colour better I heard her say in the silence.

I’ve had this idea of writing what it means to be an orphan few weeks back. I have no intention of offending anyone or whatever through this post; just wanna flesh out my ideas and see what other people might think about it.

I imagine a child going home after school and having no one to talk to about their day. No one to talk to about the conversation they had with the kid who sits next to them in class. Yes, there’s my guardian or grandparents or older sibling but no one really wants to hear that Jason got a new pencil case. Even if I told someone, what would they do? Parents instinctively provide the best for their children and want to setup their seeds to succeed in life. But not auntie, or grandpa or my guardian or the caretaker of the orphanage.

I’ve been to a few orphanages when I was younger, one in Sabah and one in KL, but the latter only to pick people up. You’ve seen the street children of India and the AIDS orphans of Africa. All these lives; no one to say, hey you know what? I’ll get you an even nicer pencil case than Jason’s. Nothing.

I guess for those of us who actually have parents or people who REALLY took care of us, we are blessed. Sometimes they call us Generation Y, sometimes they call us middle-class homes. Other times they call us spoilt brats – but for all the things we have we think of the things that we don’t have and how others go through life without it. I’m sure they cope and they find other outlets but the fact of the matter is its not natural and very real for some people; this emptiness – the void of a parental voice/guidance – genuine in love and generosity.

But of course, there’s always the flipside of the coin – there are some of us who CHOOSE not to talk to our parents. Too involved we say; too meddly. Too sad I say.

I don’t know; life is a tightrope of balance I guess and only when we visit the extremes we will find it easier to adjust the balancing bar.

As we ‘graduate’ into more mature adults, we all have internal conversations which kick in and help us navigate through situations we have been through. In babies & toddlers it includes basic physical functions like smiling, laughing, crying and hunger and aversion to pain and all that jazz.

As young adults, we have these too and most of the times when we’ve made up our minds, we don’t change it; we fight to the very end believing what we think is right.

We can’t see it ourselves though and if we are not careful and not have mentors or guides to smack us back into the right way of thinking, we will continue down this spiral of thought which we think is right but might not be right…

What is “right” anyway? I guess that’s the other ‘grey’ area. I will have different standards from you and you from the next person we meet. The ultimate escalation of this is played out in wars between countries. No one wants to budge and the one who ‘wins’ takes all the credit and fame and fortune. But sometimes the ‘losing’ country wins. Just because you are the loudest or the crudest or the most aggresive doesn’t make you the winner.

From an outsider’s point of view you will look extremely foolish, messed up in your thoughts and ultimately, wrong.

But back to my point of where differing people have differing standards. No two person has the exact same standards and this will only lead to conflict.

The thing here is to resolve a conflict with both parties THINKING that they have won. That’s the ideal isn’t it? In Chinese, there’s this saying which goes something like “leading the person down the stage”; loosely deciphered, it means to let the person realize their own foolishness and come down from their lofty stage of being, in their eyes, right.

Conversations from last night come to mind. The classic example of men vs women shopping. Men go straight to the shop they want to purchase stuff from where as girls get distracted. A friend commented that this is because men were evolutionarily hunters and women, gatherers. Men had to focus on the hunt and gauge if they had the skill and experience enough to bring down prey. Women on the other hand had to fling their choices far and wide just because of the nature of the greens.

With that story in mind, a lot of guys I’ve met along life are just that; they are hunters. They have an opinion and they stick to it tooth and nail. Females tend to congregate (crowd-source to the futurists) and comfort each other and give each other ideas.

I just have to say, the time and era for we as humans to just stick to a single way of thinking and a certain narrow mindedness is truly and thoroughly over. If we as humans (or specifically men) cannot take feedback and differing opinions in our stride, it will only cause a lot of hurt and pain to the ones closest to us. Of course, we are not called to be, termed in the loosest of ways, sissies, I’m just encouraging all of us to take inventory of our thought patterns, words and ultimately actions and continue to strive to be the best we can be.

And that sometimes may be ENTIRELY different from what we think we OUGHT to be thinking/saying/doing.

This is why, I cannot cannot cannot stress enough to have mentors and guides in our lives to put us in our place and to encourage us when we are down. These mentors ideally believe in you and will run with your ideas but when they see something going askew, they have the courage to pull us back on path. This is what modern society lacks.

With the advent of Google and Twitter where we can hear from the GREATS directly, we sometimes forget that only a person who truly cares for you speak what they really think. And usually one little “No, I don’t need to hear from you” can turn them completely off.

I guess I’ve flushed out all I want to or have to say about this topic. I find that it’s both sad & dangerous if our next generation (or even MY generation) runs fast but blindlessly and end up at the end of their lives disillusioned, disappointed and worst still, full of despair and bitterness.